The examination of endogenous attention: Stimulus-cue learning in 4- and 9-month-olds

• Main Author: Blaga, Otilia M
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2010
• Subjects: Developmental psychology
• ISBN: 1124037357; 9781124037356

Through the use of the stimulus-to-response task, the present study tested for the presence of endogenous attention in infants at 4 and 9 months of age. The stimulus-to-response task requires infants to make an internally-driven response, based on the content of a central cue stimulus. Infants were administered a task composed of a learning phase and a test phase. In the learning phase, they were familiarized with a contingency between the content of a central cue stimulus and the location of a subsequent peripheral target. If infants had the ability to guide eye movements internally, then the learned association between the stimulus cue and peripheral target location could be used to anticipate the location of the subsequent peripheral target. During the learning phase, every trial was consistent with the stimulus cue contingency. During the test phase, trials similar to those in the learning phase were conducted, but “invalid” trials that violated the contingency between the cue stimulus and the peripheral target established during the learning phase were also included. The dependent measures across both phases were latency to the peripheral target and direction of response. We expected that if infants were using the contingent relationship to anticipate the subsequent peripheral target, latencies of anticipatory responses would decrease across the learning phase. In fact, infants produced shorter latencies across both learning and test phases, but this decrease applied to both correct and incorrect anticipatory responses. This suggests that the increase in anticipations of the peripheral target were not based on the contingent relationship with the stimulus cue. A similar pattern was observed for the response variable across both variables. Finally, if infants were using the content relationship to anticipate the location of the peripheral target, the introduction of invalid trials during the test phase should have disrupted infants’ performance. However, infants at neither age were disrupted by the introduction of the invalid trials. Furthermore, responses on the invalid trials were not consistent with the stimulus-cue contingency. A secondary issue concerned the salience of the central stimulus within the stimulus-to-response task. When the task has been administered to infants, the salience of the central cue stimulus has consistently been enhanced in order to promote infants’ attention to, and retention in the task. The effect of enhancing salience in this task is unknown. In addition to the objectives outlined above, the current study examined this issue through manipulation of cue stimulus salience. It was found that more salient cue stimuli elicited more responses in younger infants. While 9-month-olds’ behavior did not vary as a function of cue salience, 4-month-olds’ latencies and responses varied, depending on the salience of the cue stimulus. These findings suggest that the enhancement of cue-stimulus salience in this task may differentially affect infants’ performance at different ages. Overall, lack of facilitation of eye movements within this task, based on the contingent relationship, paired with the role of the high salience indicates that infants at neither age showed evidence of endogenous attention. Instead, the evidence from this study shows significant exogenous influence on infants’ behavior at both ages tested.